The invention relates to a grate cooler for cooling hot bulk material with cooling air which comprises grate plates that are angled off at their front end and are detachably arranged on grate plate carriers.
German Patent No. 26 04 611 discloses a grate cooler of the above type wherein the grate plates are seated on carrier beams and are clamped thereto so that they can be easily detached from the carrier beam as needed and can be replaced with new grate plates. The grate of this grate cooler comprises a plurality of stationary and movable grate plate carrier beams on which a plurality of grate plates provided with cooling air bores are secured. The delivery of cooling air to the individual grate plates is thus effected emanating from a common cooling air collecting space. During operation of this grate cooler, parts of the solids to be cooled can drop down through the bores in the grate plates into the cooling air collecting space from where they must be outwardly transported and carried away with the assistance of special means. Given different material distributions as frequently occur in the product discharge region of a rotary tubular kiln with a slide-type grate cooler, the streams of cooling air can flow through the product bed in an uncontrolled fashion. This occurs both in the flow direction of the material as well as transversely relative to the conveying direction of the cooled product, and additional, different flow-through resistances that deteriorate the cooling effect occur as a consequence of the separation of coarse product and fine product that appear in the product discharge region of the rotary tubular kiln.
An object of the invention is to significantly improve the previously known grate cooler, particularly relative to its structural design and cooling effect.